The authoritarian transformation of the Old School

The authoritarian transformation of the Old School marks a shift from humane classical learning to a Prussian regime of hierarchy, discipline, and service. Under Director Wulicke, modernization accompanies a deeper institutional change: the school becomes a state within the state, and its students learn to comport themselves like officials seeking the favor of those in power.

From Classical Learning to Prussian Service

The change begins with Wulicke’s appointment. His predecessor, a jovial and warmhearted headmaster who had been in office when Hanno Buddenbrook’s father and uncle were students, died early in 1871. Wulicke came from a Prussian secondary school, and his arrival brought a new vocabulary of authority, duty, power, service, and career. The institution’s former ideal had treated classical learning as a joyful end in itself, pursued with calm, leisure, and cheerful idealism; under Wulicke, official speeches instead invoked the categorical imperative of the philosopher Kant.

The altered ideal reaches beyond the staff. Teachers and pupils alike begin to think of themselves as civil servants, intent on advancing their careers and remaining in good standing with their superiors. The school is described as a state within the state: its hierarchy does not merely teach obedience as an abstract lesson but organizes the ambitions and conduct of the people inside it. Discipline becomes a daily social practice, reinforced by the students’ awareness of how they may be judged by those above them.

Modernization and Its Cost

Soon after Wulicke’s arrival, the Old School undergoes renovation according to the latest hygienic and aesthetic standards. The work is successfully completed, giving the institution modern comfort, but the narrative leaves open whether the school has thereby improved in a more important sense. Its earlier rooms had offered more kindness, sentiment, serenity, benevolence, and good cheer, even if they possessed less modern convenience.

That contrast prevents modernization from serving as a simple sign of progress. Physical renewal coincides with the loss of a gentler educational atmosphere. The school’s new efficiency and its increasingly severe moral language belong to the same transformation, while the human qualities displaced by that change remain visible as the measure of what has been lost.

Wulicke’s Personal Rule

Wulicke embodies the regime’s power in a temperament at once commanding and unpredictable. He is presented as enigmatic, duplicitous, wilful, and jealous; both his smile and his anger inspire fear. Though he may tell a joke, he can turn furiously on anyone who laughs. His authority leaves subordinates uncertain how to act, so they abase themselves in the hope of avoiding his wrath.

This uncertainty makes self-discipline part of the institution’s operation. Those under Wulicke’s authority cannot rely on a stable distinction between acceptable and dangerous behavior; they must anticipate his response and regulate themselves accordingly. The school’s hierarchy is thus felt not only through official doctrine but through the daily effort to read and appease the person who commands it.

Discipline in the Classroom

A classroom inspection makes the system’s bodily demands visible. When Wulicke enters an English lesson without knocking, the pupils spring to their feet, press their arms to their sides, lean forward, bow their heads, and bite their tongues. The professor turns ash-grey and pulls down his chair, dusting it with a handkerchief, while the students hold their strained posture in silence. Only after inspecting them does Wulicke order them to sit and tell the lesson to continue.

The sequence turns an ordinary class into a demonstration of authority: an abrupt entrance, a collective salute, a prolonged inspection, and a permission to resume. The pupils’ synchronized movements show discipline operating directly on the body, while the professor’s trembling and careful deference extend the same hierarchy to the teaching staff. Even after Wulicke sits beside the platform, his presence governs the room and shadows the continuation of instruction.

Hanno, Kai, and the School’s Meaning

Hanno Buddenbrook and Kai Mölln respond to the institution differently from classmates who resort to simple revenge or obstinacy. They privately use a more pointed, ironic manner toward their teachers, addressing them with the formal title Herr before the surname. Their discretion matters: they keep their shared nickname for Wulicke between themselves and avoid letting other students overhear it, wary of the director’s fixed, cold incomprehension.

Their irony does not erase their exposure to the school’s power. Rather, it gives their alienation a form: they reject the students’ ordinary jokes as cheap and prosaic, and imagine the teaching staff as a grotesque, repulsive pedagogic body. In this contrast between the boys’ private wit and the school’s public rituals, the transformation appears not merely as stricter administration but as a narrowing of the imaginative and humane life that the Old School once represented.